This is not about things like the nature or origin
of the universe – which
tend to be rather weird and unexplainable – or about flying saucer
sightings, but about the day-to-day things that seem really weird and
can't be explained. My sister got me to thinking about this recently
while I was visiting her. We were out hiking with our dogs (her two
and my one) when she said that she had dreamed that a woman was chasing
her dogs with a trombone. You can't make stuff up like that, and neither
can you explain it.

We all have had such dreams, and I'm sure there are
dream specialists out there who would claim to explain my sister's
dream, but how would anyone know if the explanation was valid or just
bullshit. We tend to accept explanations that seem logical and reject
those that don't. I had a dream once that I was out hunting, and when
I fired my gun a fish came out instead of bullets and landed about
10 feet from me. I don't hunt or shoot guns, and I really don't want
to hear what a dream expert would say about that dream – especially
a Freudian psychologist. If the explanations can't be proven, then
why bother coming up with them?

Explaining things is human nature. We have an inherent and uncontrollable
need to give explanations to things that happen. Experts call this
cognitive modeling. Stupid people say “it was meant to be.” Cognitive
modeling involves our use of perceptual models of our environment to
explain what is happening around us. An important part of these cognitive
models are called Cause Maps. Cause maps are used by people in their
daily lives to interpret the rationale and motives of the behavior
of others. People of different cultures have different cause maps due
to cultural influences.

A good example of using cause maps is if you are sitting in a theatre
watching a movie and the person next to you gets up and squeezes past
you, heading for the door. You probably think one of three things;
the person has to go to the bathroom, the person is going to get a
snack, or the person doesn't like the movie and is leaving. But you
will assign an explanation to the person's behavior. Guaranteed. We
all do it. As a general rule, women tend to do it more in depth than
men.

In explaining the behavior of our pets, we all tend to anthropomorphize
(to attribute human form or personality to things not human). We do
that because our cause maps are human cause maps. Recently a friend's
pet cockatiel was sitting on top of its cage and I was sitting across
the room. When I stood up the bird flew over to me and sat on my shoulder.
My first though was that it was friendly and liked me. But almost immediately
it attacked my neck and bit it with much malice. It was jealous. At
least that was my friend's explanation. I'll never know for certain.
Do birds experience jealousy? Perhaps it was just being territorial.
As humans we tend to understand jealousy more than being territorial.

I have an explanation for my sister's dream. When we were young I
played the trombone. On occasion I would antagonize our black Labrador
retriever with my trombone. I also antagonized a lot of people with
it, but I never chased any of them. I think she must have observed
this many years ago, forgotten about it, and it surfaced in her dream
because I was visiting with my black dog. Then again, it could be because
my sister is weird. But I still can't explain the fish. Perhaps it
was meant to be.